Positive Interference
by Gypsy Druid
Summary: When Buffy dies in the jump to save her sister, The Powers interfere, in an effort to keep their most successful Champion in an active status, to derail several future threats, and to give back a little of what she had lost. Xover with Stargate SG-1
1. Prologue

Positive Interference

**Disclaimers: **I own nothing and no one. Therefore, no profit has been or will ever be made from this story. 'Nuff said.

**Spoilers:** 'Ascension', Stargate SG-1, S. 5, Ep. 3; Buffy's death in 'The Gift', S. 5, Ep. 22 (Season Finale)

**Rated:** 18, possibly 21, for violence and sexual situation. Some might even be explicit. Okay… okay… most of them probably will be.

**Pairings:** All of my favorite pairings are in here. Sam/Janet, Buffy/Faith, Willow/Tara

**Summary: **When Buffy dies in the jump to save her sister, The Powers interfere, in an effort to keep their most successful Champion in an active status, to derail several future threats, and to give back a little of what she had lost. Response to BuffyCharmed's Challenge 'Too Much Interference'.

Anything I've missed (disclaimer related) I can't think of it at the moment, but it still applies.

Thanks to everyone who volunteered to be my beta-readers. I really needed you guys.

Special Thanks to IceFlame55 & Bill Gopher. They're always there to help out whenever I've run into the proverbial brick-walls.

Prologue

Whistler looked at the Slayer as she rested in a kind of stasis. A feeling of foreboding filled him as he listened to The Powers angrily arguing over their Champion. It was the angry part that made him uneasy. The Powers didn't usually concern themselves with lesser beings enough to invest emotion.

"This was not foreseen," one of the disembodied voices stated curiously. "We did not expect the Champion to sacrifice her own life for one that was merely created out of necessity."

"This is _unconscionable_," a second voice snarled furiously. "The Key was supposed to be returned to us once the threat was eliminated. This Champion has thwarted us yet again. This cannot go unpunished."

Whistler quickly intervened before _that_ line of thought could get too far. "If I may speak?"

"What do you have to say, Voice?" One of them asked.

"I think in this case we all may have misjudged this particular Champion's dedication to the lives of those that she loves. She had already demonstrated how far she was willing to go to keep them safe when she willingly traded the Box of Gavrok for the life of her friend, and you made the Key her sister. If she was willing to go so far for the life of one that she 'considers' family, can we honestly be surprised at how far she would go for one that 'is' family?"

"She was not _family_." Whistler could hear the disgusted sneer in the voice. "She was a temporary construct, and meant to be returned to us. That is why we allowed the demon his opening to spill her blood once the Hell Goddess had been taken care of."

"I have watched the Slayer for years," Whistler said. "I know her. The moment that you made the construct, and integrated a life for her in the memories of the Slayer and her friends and mother, the construct became her sister in every sense of the word, regardless of the truth that she later discovered."

"Hmm," Voice #1 considered. "It may be that he is correct. It has been an age since we have bothered to discern the reasoning of the lesser beings more than was necessary for our purposes."

"Regardless, we cannot simply let this one go." A new voice interjected. "She is by far the most successful Champion that we have had in a millennium."

"Perhaps we can use this to our advantage." Voice #1 mused thoughtfully. "We are all aware that this Slayer cannot remain a part of the Slayer Line. Her presence there has been disrupting the balance. She has died once already, and if she returns again, in any form, it will tip the balance too far to one side."

"Such a thing will give our Enemy an opportunity to gain a foothold." Voice #2 was startled out of its anger at that news. "That cannot be allowed. Although I do agree that we cannot simply allow this particular champion to be released just yet. There are other areas that could use her particular abilities."

"There is one in particular that will need her skills soon."

"How far have they progressed?"

"Our Champions there have managed to destroy a significant amount of the Rejected Ones' forces. They are once more turning their attentions on Earth, no longer satisfied with the bounties that they have already taken."

"It will also not be long before they draw the attention of the Corrupted, which will pose an entirely different set of problems that she will be able to attend to."

"It is agreed then?" Voice #1 asked the others.

"It is agreed." The other two voices intoned in unison.

"We will wipe her mind clean and start anew." Voice #2 said, almost gleefully. "She will be guided in submission as she was meant to be."

"It won't work." Whistler blurted. The ensuing silence told him that they were all 'staring' at him, if they had eyes. He shivered involuntarily. "Not completely, anyway. Her mind is too strong. Eventually, her memories will break through."

"Unfortunately, he is correct." Voice #1 said.

"Regardless, adjustments are required before she can be returned." Voice #3 announced. "We must also integrate her into the lives of those she must fight alongside. Their kind will not allow an unknown to simply walk amongst them. Her essence must be changed, and she must be shielded from magical detection. At least until she recalls her true identity. Even now, the witch searches for her. She already touches the forbidden in her quest."

"What has been foreseen?" Voice #2 asked.

"If she remains, the witch will succeed. She will pull the Champion from her rest, and it will not only upset the balance and give our Enemy the foothold that He needs, but it will also damage the soul of this Champion."

"Both situations must be avoided at all costs. A broken soul can fall into the Darkness without even being aware of it." Voice #1 said, almost thoughtfully.

"A compromise, then." Voice #3 suggested. "For all of her intractability, this one is unarguably one of our greatest Champions, but even _we_ must acknowledge that she has been forced to sacrifice too much, too quickly. Even now, animosity grows within her against us. Although she will inevitably be called to fight, let us give her a better life than the one she had here. Especially if we are denying her the peace that she has rightly earned."

"Acceptable." The other Voices intoned.

"Voice, you claim to know this one." Voice #1 suddenly said. "What do you suggest?"

Whistler's eyes opened comically wide. They'd never asked for his opinion before. Or anyone's opinion, for that matter. He turned to look at Buffy and gave the matter the consideration that it deserved. "Lay it out for her. Tell her what's happening and what her choices are. She's not gonna like either one, no matter what."

The Voices were silent as they considered it. Finally Voice #1 spoke again. "Very well. We leave it to you to explain."


	2. Chapter One

Chapter One

"Sam, breakfast is ready!"

"I'll be down in a second." Samantha Carter, Major in the United States Air Force, responded to her young sister's summons. Tantalizing scents of bacon and eggs and apple syrup, which meant griddle cakes, drifting up the stairs, made Sam dress just a little faster.

"Sam!" Elizabeth shouted. "You've got to be leaving for the base in a half an hour. If you plan to eat breakfast this morning, then come on."

"I'm here, brat." Sam replied, coming down the steps. "What's on your plate for today?"

"Haven't decided yet." Elizabeth told her. "I might go to few classes today, but I'm running out of things to do. Why am I doing this again?"

"Because it will make Dad proud."

Elizabeth gave her sister a flat look. "C'mon, Sam. You don't really think I believe that man cares about anything that I do, do you?"

"It's not that he doesn't care, Eli." Sam told her. Shortly after Jordan had met Elizabeth, she had told the blonde that she flat out _refused_ to call her 'Ellie', and started calling her Eli. Slowly everyone else started calling her by the shorter diminutive as well. "It's just, well, he loved our mom very much, and you are so much like her. I think it hurts him."

Elizabeth shrugged. She had always been strangely ambivalent about her estrangement with their father, almost as if it weren't something new to her. Elizabeth had been an unplanned 'anniversary gift', which was how Sam had often heard her mother refer to the new life growing inside of her, and was younger than Sam by almost 15 years. Sam had practically raised her from birth, with the help of a variety of nannies, since their mother had been killed by a drunk driver. Even though her mother had been technically dead, the doctors had been able to keep her heart beating long enough to deliver Elizabeth by emergency C-section. There had been complications with the birth, and for some time, the doctors hadn't been too sure that Elizabeth would make it.

It had been raining hard the day the drunk driver had slammed full speed into the taxi carrying Rebecca Carter to her appointment with her obstetrician. The only reason that she had not been killed instantly along with the two drivers was because she had been in the back on the passenger side and the cab had been hit in the front on the driver side. By the time the paramedics arrived, the pregnant woman had been soaked to the bone, heavily shocked and nearly dead, and weakly clutching at her stomach in trauma-induced early labor. They'd had to haphazardly dry her off to use the defibrillator when she flat-lined en route to the hospital, and again just as they got her into the delivery ward. Despite the doctors' best efforts and her own strong will, Rebecca Carter died on the delivery table due to blood loss and the unrelenting stress to her overtaxed system, just after her first, and last, cuddle to her new baby girl. Her last words naming the child: Elizabeth Anne Carter.

It had been a very steep, rocky and precarious uphill battle from there. The shocks that had kept Rebecca alive, enhanced by her still damp skin, had ultimately hyper stimulated the pre-born's nervous system, according to the doctors. The system of a premature infant, born over a month early, was already delicate. It was dangerous and unwise to medicate a hyper sensitive nervous system in an adult, much less a child. The combination of the two was a nightmare for the neo-natal ward. Elizabeth had been closely monitored around the clock, and the doctors still considered it a miracle that she'd lived the first two weeks.

Jacob Carter had indeed been devastated by his wife's death, but in Sam's opinion, that had been no reason to abandon his innocent newborn daughter. He had begun withdrawing from the baby the first time she'd suddenly flat-lined. The shocks used to restart her heart had sensitized her even more. He continued to monitor her progress, and made sure that she received the best of care, but Sam recognized the growing distance in his eyes. The second time they'd nearly lost her, he'd made arrangements for her care, but refused to watch the last piece of his beloved wife struggle and possibly succumb, especially after the doctors told them exactly how the odds were against her. Even now, although Jacob was mending his relationship with their brother, Mark, his relationship with Elizabeth remained neutral, at best. Having basically ignored her for almost all of her life, they simply had nothing to fall back on.

Sam had immediately picked up the slack, determined to provide the emotional support that they were repeatedly told would be essential to Elizabeth's survival, especially considering her condition. Unlike her father, she understood, even then, what the doctors were telling them about her sister. She'd even tried to explain it to him.

Elizabeth's system processed stimuli at a highly accelerated rate, which resulted in the infant developing extremely heightened senses. Most babies born with the rare condition developed the capacity to regulate the flood of input, but because Elizabeth's was due to the abnormal reactions to the defibrillator shocks, she did not yet have that capacity, and until her brain worked something out, she would need constant visual and tactile support, something to focus on.

In the end, Sam had practically raised Elizabeth by herself, despite her father's desire to give her up for adoption. Between her own research, and advice from the many professional fascinated by their case, Sam helped the baby process the overwhelming flood of input, even if it was something as simple as cutting them both off from the outside world by shutting the door and turning off the machines, and holding the child skin to skin to give her something to focus on. When she grew older, they studied various meditation techniques to do the same thing.

Their brother, Mark, had also been a huge help. His estrangement with their father had only grown worse when he'd found out how Jacob was treating the baby, and they'd had more than one argument over it. He instantly adored his youngest sister. He had been furious when Sam had entered the Air Force behind their father, but after seeing that she didn't intend to allow her career to cut herself off from her family responsibilities, he accepted it and her.

Sam had arranged her military career around her little sister. Jacob contributed by paying for the specially trained nurses and nannies. Elizabeth's body eventually acclimated, although her brain scans revealed unusual activity in her neural pathways, in all sections of her brain, but especially in the reptilian brain, which processed the input from the five senses. In essence, Elizabeth was using more of her brain than the average human being, and she was equally susceptible to her primal instincts as she was to her reasoning and intellect. Sam had to train her to merge the two before she reacted to things. Elizabeth was a medical miracle and a medical mystery all rolled into one adorable little package.

Another anomaly that they had discovered about Elizabeth was that she grew to have an incredible tolerance to electrical charges. It had been an accidental discovery, when there was a power surge during one of her experiments when she was fourteen. The surge had sent an arc of electricity from a Tesla coil that she had been using. Sam saw the flash of bright white light and a heavy thud and ran to the basement where they had built Elizabeth's home lab, and found her sister collapsed against the far wall, her hair, cut short like Sam's at the time, sticking out in every direction, and a wide-eyed expression on her face. There was a ragged hole in her shirt where the electricity had struck her.

"Wow," she muttered, a little dazed. "What a head rush."

Sam had gotten Elizabeth up the stairs and onto the couch before calling Janet, who had, by that time, become the primary health-care provider for both Carters.

Despite everything, somehow, she had managed to end up in the most Top Secret government program on the planet. Thankfully, Elizabeth was already highly self-sufficient, and had a caretaker who loved her fiercely, or she would have had to turn the assignment down. She had never been more thankful for Diana Maclay then when her team started their extended off-world missions. When Janet later adopted Cassandra, Eli had quickly drawn the shy newcomer into her group of close friends.

Sam watched Eli as she ate her breakfast with one hand, and scribbled into her notebook with the other. She glanced at the equations for a second.

"What are you working on?" she finally asked.

Elizabeth shrugged again. "Just a theory."

Sam didn't ask any more. She knew how her sister got when she had one of her theories. People considered Sam to be a genius, but Elizabeth's intellect easily overshadowed her own. Her younger sister was seventeen years old and would already have at least two PhDs, in Quantum Mechanics and Bioinformatics, if she'd only do her theses. She was also very active. Her fast metabolism guaranteed that she ate astonishingly large meals for someone so slender. She was extraordinarily strong for her age, quick and agile, on top of her extremely heightened senses, and a virtual savant in when it came to martial arts. If she hadn't raised her sister from birth, Sam would have thought Elizabeth was a hok'tar.

"The dreams are getting more bizarre," Elizabeth suddenly said, drawing her older sister out of her thoughts.

"Still about vampires and demons?" She asked.

Elizabeth nodded. She'd been having the weird dreams since she was fifteen, but Sam hadn't found out for several months. Not until Elizabeth had woken up screaming one night. She'd been dreaming that she'd been some kind of superhero, destined to keep the world safe from horror movie monsters and, on that particular night, one of the monsters, an old and powerful one, had killed her. When the dreams didn't stop there, Sam had asked Elizabeth if she wanted to see a professional, to maybe find the source of the dreams. And discovered that her baby sister had an almost pathological phobia when it came to psychiatrists.

"There was something new this time, though," Elizabeth was saying.

That captured Sam's undivided attention. "What?"

"A voice. It seemed to be overshadowing the dream somehow."

"What did it say?"

"_When you remember me, call my name_. It sounded like an extra from a '60's New York gangster movie," Elizabeth recalled. Then she sighed and glanced at the clock behind her sister. "It's time for you to go."

Sam hesitated, but finally nodded. She wanted to continue the discussion about her dreams, but she knew her sister well enough to know that Elizabeth was finished talking about it for now. "I'll call if we get caught up and have to stay."

Elizabeth nodded. "We're all going to the mall this afternoon. Do you need anything?"

Sam ran through a mental inventory, then rattled off a list of items for her to pick up. "Who's driving?"

"Tara." Elizabeth grinned at her. Elizabeth hadn't been allowed behind the wheel of a car since she'd nearly caused her last driver's education teacher to have a heart attack on the training course. Something about driving too fast and hairpin turns. She pointed to a Styrofoam food container tied in a plastic grocery store bag. "Don't forget Jack's breakfast."

~~~ BtVS ~~ SG-1 ~~~

Later that morning, Elizabeth read over the equations that she had been scribbling down. She was glad that Sam never pressed her about her random theories, especially this particular one. At the moment, Elizabeth had no idea how to explain that she'd nearly figured out a way to rig an intergalactic distress signal without actually having to use the Stargate to create the needed wormhole.

She knew that her sister would be furious that she'd hacked into the government computers again, but come on, who in their right minds would believe that a theoretical astrophysicist was needed in 'Deep Space Radar Telemetry?' What was Sam supposed to do, tell them how a specific star was formed and what effect it had in the universe?

Elizabeth had no problems with Sam being in top secret, classified programs, as long as she always came home at least relatively okay. She didn't even bat an eyelash when 'Murray' visited for the first time, despite somehow knowing instinctively that the big black man wasn't completely human. More specifically, _he_ was human, but there was something _inside_ of him that wasn't.

Just like she knew that there was something different about Cassie. She was completely human, but there was something funny about her scent, almost as if she had been altered on a genetic level. Even then, she hadn't given much thought or consideration to whatever program Sam was involved in. If Sam trusted them, then so did she. It wasn't until Sam came home different herself, and depressed to an almost dangerous degree, that Elizabeth had carefully made her way through Sam's security protocols and encryptions to find out exactly what her sister had gotten herself into.

The fact that there were aliens out there surprised her a little, but for some odd reason, the fact that they were evil and trying to enslave the human race didn't. The Goa'uld styled themselves after the ancient cultural gods and goddesses of Earth, and the most powerful called themselves the System Lords. Murray, whose real name was Teal'c, was a Jaffa, an altered human with one of the evil aliens gestating in a pouch in his stomach. She found the file on Cassie which described, in detail, the genetic manipulation and the bomb that could form in her blood and cells.

After a little more searching, she finally found what she was looking for. Sam had been taken over by one of the aliens, one that had terrorized Cassie. Elizabeth had to wrestle back a flare of protective rage before she could keep reading. The alien had turned out to be a part of a resistance group that was trying to destroy the System Lords. Her previous host had been wounded beyond repair, and it had been essential that she get certain information to her people, and had taken Sam in a desperate act. Not knowing who the strange people were, her only objective had been to get back through the Stargate. Frightening Cassie had been an unfortunate misunderstanding, something that she hadn't wanted to do, but she couldn't risk the child telling after realizing that the girl could sense her presence.

In the end, Jolinar had sacrificed herself to save Sam's life, which was the cause of Sam's depression. The guys had never heard of the Tok'ra in their travels, and didn't believe Jolinar when she admitted who and what she was. Even after Jolinar had given Sam her voice back and Sam had verified the story, they hadn't believed. It was only when a Goa'uld assassin infiltrated Stargate Command and tortured Jolinar, in Sam's body, that Jolinar had made the ultimate sacrifice so that Sam could live.

After a little more reading, she flagged a few things and eased back out of the systems, being careful to leave no traces. That was how she found out that Jacob had become a liaison to the Tok'ra, taking the symbiote Selmak in exchange for curing his cancer. She had been shocked at the news. She hadn't known that he had cancer, and that meant that Sam hadn't known either. Her heart hurt for her sister, and for the first time, she actually felt anger towards the man that was her father. To have found out something like that when the man was practically on his death bed had to have devastated Sam. She was honest enough to know that she didn't know the man well enough to miss him if he suddenly died, but Sam practically worshipped their dad, and what he'd done was just wrong on so many levels. Stupid male, military mentality.

After reading countless briefings of Sam's team being captured and barely managing to escape against nearly impossible odds, Elizabeth decided that they needed a way to signal for help that _didn't_ rely on the Stargate, and, therefore, set herself to working on it.


	3. Chapter Two

**A/N: **Since Sam had something to focus on instead of just her career, she's a bit more 'in touch' with her feminine side than she was in the show. More like she was after she became friends with Vala much, much later.

Chapter Two

"Hey, Carter, how's the rugrat?" Jack O'Neill asked cheerfully as soon as she was off the elevator.

"She's fine, sir," Sam answered, wondering, _again_, how he always seemed to know when Elizabeth sent him food. He was always waiting for her. "She sent this for you."

He took the bag with a hungry smile and waved back at her as he walked away. "If anyone's looking for me, I'll be in my office. Tell them that it had better be serious if they interrupt my breakfast. Like, end of the world serious."

"Yes, sir," Sam said to his back. "No interruptions unless the base is attacked."

"The _world_, Carter," Jack tossed back at her. "Nothing less."

"Yes, sir," Sam said again, shaking her head in amusement before turning towards her office. Logging onto her computer, she checked her schedule. SG-1 was gating out to investigate an alien device early this afternoon. After everything that had just gone on with Teal'c, they needed a simple and relatively stress-free mission. Until then, she'd work on a couple of her projects.

~~~ BtVS ~~ SG-1 ~~~

"I'm not exactly sure what happened, Janet." Sam said, sitting up in the bed several hours later. "The next thing I know, I'm waking up with Colonel O'Neill looking down at me. I suppose it's possible I touched something that still had a live current inside the device."

"Well, you don't have any contact burns," The CMO observed.

"That doesn't necessarily mean anything." Sam told her.

"You know, people have been known to black out from fatigue," Janet commented. "You have been running a little ragged lately."

"Oh, come on, Jan. I was just a little tired." Sam rolled her eyes. "Besides, you gave me clearance to go."

"And I'm starting to question that judgment."

"Janet, I'm _fine_." Sam stressed. "Just because there aren't any contact burns, doesn't mean that I didn't get a little jolt that knocked me for a loop. Did you find anything wrong with me?"

"Well, no."

"Great." Sam said when she didn't continue. She gave Janet a bright smile as she hopped off the bed.

"Make sure you come straight back if you start gibbering in an alien language." Janet called after her, knowing when she was defeated.

"I'm sure I'll have no choice." Sam grinned as she slipped out.

She made her way to the briefing room where the others were already gathered. She listened with a half an ear to Daniel's dissertation, contributing when necessary, and tried unsuccessfully to get back to the planet to take another look at the device.

"You couldn't go regardless, Major." General Hammond smiled fondly at her. "You specifically asked me to make sure that you were on THIS planet next weekend."

"That's right!" Sam's eyes lit up with excitement. "Thank you, sir."

"How is my other goddaughter?" Hammond asked.

"She's good, sir." Sam smiled. "I'm actually considering doing the paperwork to bring her into the Stargate program as a civilian consultant. She's getting bored with school."

"Is that wise?" He asked. "It is very dangerous, sometimes even on the good days."

"She can handle that." Sam told him. "I'd be surprised if she didn't already know what we do down here. She's too smart to believe the cover story, and considering how I've come home sometimes, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that she's sneaked past my security measures to find out exactly what I'm doing."

"Very well," The general acknowledged. "But she must finish those degrees. There's really no reason for her to leave them hanging as they have been. If she wishes to join us here, tell her that's a non-negotiable prerequisite."

"Yes, sir." Sam said with a bright smile.

"What do you and the rugrat have planned, Carter?" Jack asked as they rode the elevator topside.

"We're taking a trip up to California," Sam told him. "We're going to visit Mark, then go to LA for some sightseeing and shopping."

What Sam didn't say was that it seemed like the majority of Elizabeth's dreams seemed to be focused on some small town just outside of LA, called Sunnydale. A Google search had revealed that the town really existed and they were going to see if the town sparked any more 'dreams.'

She returned home, maneuvered around the Jeep in the driveway, and parked her Indian next to the twin Ninjas already in the garage. She peeked into the guest bedroom to see Tara and her girlfriend asleep in each others arms. A barely audible knock and a quick peek into Elizabeth's room showed a sleeping Jordan sprawled over her sister's bed, obviously naked under the covers if the clothes strewn all over the place were any indication. On the other side of the room, Elizabeth waved at her without turning from her computer, covered only in a silk robe.

~~~ BtVS ~~ SG-1 ~~~

After waving to her sister, Elizabeth returned her attention to the work on her computer. She heard Sam enter her room and grinned when she faintly heard her going through the bags that had been left on her bed. She and Jordan were trying to get their sisters, or sister-in-law in Jordan's case, to admit their feelings for one another. She was imagining the look on Sam's face when she saw the little 'additions' that had been included in her purchases, when she felt something shift in the air. Stiffening, Elizabeth slowly turned to face the door, eyes narrowed and all senses focused, but there was nothing. There were no sounds or scents as her eyes moved across the far wall, unknowingly tracking the invisible entity that was moving down the hall, following her sister.

After a moment, the feeling vanished. Slipping on a pair of lounge pants and a t-shirt, Elizabeth grabbed one of her training staffs. On silent feet, she searched the house, careful not to disturb any of her sleeping friends, or alert her sister. Assured that the house was intruder-free, Elizabeth returned to her room, set the staff on the floor next to her bed within easy reach, and went through the meditation techniques that she used to slow down her system enough to sleep.

Her dreams that night were more unusual than they normally were. She dreamed of a young, dark haired girl that she called 'sister', and a psychopathic blonde woman that was trying to kill her for some odd reason. As she watched herself fight the woman, she briefly wondered if her opponent could be one of the Goa'uld, but that didn't feel right. Suddenly, she sensed another presence. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something floating above the ground, glowing white with tentacles flowing around.

_'You are not welcome here, Ascended,'_ that strange New York-sounding voice said.

Elizabeth's eyes snapped open with a gasp. What the fuck was that?

The next morning, Elizabeth awoke to the smell of breakfast and coffee. Untangling herself from her girlfriend, Elizabeth dressed and made her way downstairs. She saw her sister outside talking to a scruffy looking blonde guy. She could tell by her sister's stance that he was making her uncomfortable. She watched the guy watch Sam return to the house, then her eyes narrowed as he vanished into thin air. She walked to the entryway that connected the kitchen to the hallway, about to call out to Sam, when she froze, feeling the same intruder from last night - only this time, it was right at the doorway, as if it had just walked in.

Sam looked back in surprise when Elizabeth let out a low animalistic growl. Her sister was facing the closed front door.

"All right, I don't know who or what you are, but you better show yourself," Elizabeth snarled, drawing everyone to the hall, including her sleep-eyed girlfriend who was just coming down the stairs. "Because I swear, if I have to figure out how to make you visible, you _will_ regret it."

"Baby, what…"

That's as far as Jordan got before Sam inhaled sharply as a body suddenly appeared in the hall in front of Elizabeth. It was the man that had approached her just moments before while she was outside getting the paper.


	4. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

"Please, I am sorry," the stranger said, holding up his hands imploringly. "I merely wished for company. I have been alone for a very long time."

"Who are you?" Sam demanded.

"My name is Orlin." He looked at the young people surrounding him, then focused on Sam. "I followed you back here after you left the compound that I had been exiled to."

It only took a moment for Sam to realize what he was saying, and what he wasn't. Her eyes widened in shock and near-horror. This 'man' had followed her back through the Stargate, and worse, out of the base. Elizabeth took one look at the expression on her sister's face and began ushering the others out.

"Come on, you guys," she said clearly. "This has to do with Sam's job, so we can't know anything about it. Let's get dressed and go out for breakfast."

She gave her sister a look that clearly said that they would be talking about this later, and Sam nodded in acknowledgment. This hadn't been how she wanted to tell Elizabeth about the Program, but it was too late now. Sam ushered Orlin into the kitchen until the girls left.

"Now, are you from P4X-636?" Sam questioned. He looked at her blankly. "The planet where we found the device?"

"Ah, Velona." Comprehension filled his eyes. "Yes, that is where I was. I must apologize to you, though."

"Me?" Sam was surprised. "Why?"

"I am afraid that when I first tried to communicate with you, you were not prepared."

Sam understood immediately. "You're what knocked me out back there?"

He nodded. "It was not intentional, I assure you. I merely wished to communicate."

She studied him for a moment, gauging his sincerity, then finally nodded. "Okay, I can understand that." She paused for a moment. "You realize that I am going to have to report this, don't you?"

"Please do not," Orlin implored. "I merely wish for some company for a time, before I return to my exile. I will not remain long."

"I'm sorry, but I have no choice." Sam told him. "We can not have unsupervised aliens running around loose, especially one that we know nothing about."

"I will merely hide my presence from them," Orlin told her as she was reaching for the phone. "Your technology is not capable of detecting me."

"So, what are you going to do?" She asked, exasperated. "Stalk us for the rest of our lives?"

"No," Orlin shook his head. "Simply allow me to stay for a few days, and then I will return to Velona."

"Well, regardless of the fact that you can disappear at will, I still have to report this to my superiors," Sam told him. "I have no problems with you staying here for a few days, as long as you don't endanger my sister or any of the girls."

"Of course not." Orlin relaxed as she hung up the phone. "Your sister is a remarkable human."

"Excuse me?" Sam turned to him sharply, her entire demeanor changing in a heartbeat.

"Her soul shines so brightly, it's beautiful," he said, not even taking heed of her suddenly threatening manner. "It drew me, and I attempted to take a closer look, and somehow found myself ejected from her dreaming mind. Is she aware that she has memories of another, most unusual, life?"

"So, they _are_ memories?" Elizabeth asked, surprising them both. Neither of them had heard the door open.

"Where are the others?" Sam asked, immediately noticing that she was alone.

"At Tara's." The younger Carter took a seat at the table. "I told them that we'd meet them later." She turned her attention to Orlin. "So, that was you last night. That voice called you 'Ascended.'"

Sam's eyes widened, and she gaped in shock. That, she hadn't expected. "You're one of the Ascended, like Oma Desala?"

"I do not know of an Oma Desala." Orlin shrugged. "I have, however, Ascended. If you like, I can release your memories back to you."

Elizabeth considered that for a second, then shook her head. "Nah, my system can't take a sudden wave of information like that. Better to let it come out gradually like it's been doing. Besides, from the way the dreams are looking, I doubt that the memories are of a good life, so I think it's better that I receive it a little at a time to let me become accustomed to what I'm obviously 'remembering.' It seems like that life was unusually violent."

"Then what were you doing on Velona?" Sam broke in, interrupting them. "You said that it was your exile and your punishment. What were you being punished for?"

Orlin got a faraway look in his eyes. "The Velonans were being decimated by the Goa'uld. Although my people are not supposed to interfere, I could not let them be annihilated."

"You helped them build the device." Sam's eyes widened again in realization. This encounter was just one shock after the other. "It's a weapon."

"I… guided them in the right direction." Orlin lowered his eyes in shame. "After the threat was over, however, they turned the weapon to conquer other planets. After the Velonans were destroyed because of their arrogance, I was exiled to the planet, to remain forever alone, because I broke our tenet."

"Why were you being punished?" Elizabeth asked. "They used the weapon offensively, not you."

"The Velonans were not…advanced…enough to consider a weapon of such power." Orlin told them, his voice very soft. "A minor touch to induce more advanced thinking was all that it took, but the one that I altered became a tyrant and a conqueror. He used the weapon on a planet that denied him what he thought was his due. They did not fight him, for they abhorred violence of any kind, but they would not submit to them either. Therefore, he destroyed them. All of them, from the smallest of babes to the oldest of men. None survived his wrath. That is when The Others stepped in."

Before Sam could ask another question, the phone rang. Since she was closest, Elizabeth glanced at the Caller ID to see if it was for her or for Sam. It said 'Restricted'. She picked up. "Carter residence."

"Hey rugrat," Jack said. "Tell Carter to report back. We've got some information from the, ah, satellite."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "Jack, you've known me for what, four, five years, yeah?"

"Um, yeah," Jack answered. "That sounds about right. So?"

"So, how long do you _really_ think I believed that lame-ass cover story?" Elizabeth grinned at his groan as Sam shook her head in amusement and grabbed her keys. "She's leaving now."

"Thanks, kid," he said before hanging up.

"You know she's gonna tell them about you, right?" Elizabeth said to her 'guest' as she hung up the phone.

Orlin nodded.

"You gonna hide when they send their guys here looking?"

"I have no choice," Orlin told her. "I can not allow myself to be captured, even if your people could find a way to locate me. I was very surprised when you sensed my presence."

Elizabeth shrugged. "Complications in my birth left me with sharper senses than the average human, or the average wild animal." She studied him for a moment. "Tell you what. Why don't we swap stories? I'll tell you what happened to me, and you can tell me what happened to you. Deal?"

~~~ BtVS ~~ SG-1 ~~~

The moment Sam reached Level 27, she pulled Jack aside.

"Sir, I have a situation."

"What's up, Carter?" Jack asked.

"Someone followed me back through the Stargate from P4X-636." Sam told him. "Elizabeth sensed him and forced him to reveal himself."

"What?!?" Jack exclaimed. "How did it possibly get past security?"

"It's one of the Ascended. We have absolutely nothing that can detect it if it doesn't want to be detected. His name is Orlin, and he's been exiled on Velona."

Jack gave her a confused look.

"P4X-636. Velona is the name of the planet. Orlin helped the people of Velona build a weapon to defend themselves against the Goa'uld, but then they used it on other planets, trying to become conquerors themselves."

Jack focused on the most important thing. "So, it _is_ a weapon. Daniel found something in the translations that alluded to that."

"Sir," Sam said with exaggerated patience. "What about my visitor? He's there right now with Elizabeth."

"Oh, we'll send a team there as soon as you let me go, Carter." Jack smirked, glancing down at his arm where she was gripping it.

"Oh, uh, sorry, sir." Sam let him go.


	5. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Elizabeth watched in amusement as the Air Force personnel combed their house from top to bottom looking for Orlin. She couldn't sense him anymore, so she knew that he'd left the house. She told them flatly that they couldn't install surveillance equipment the moment they started pulling them out of their bags. She wasn't sacrificing her privacy for them, not for someone that they wouldn't find. After they finally left, she went through and removed the cleverly hidden cameras and mini-microphones that they'd installed despite her very clearly stated wishes.

"When I said no surveillance equipment," she spoke into the last mic she found. "I meant _no equipment._ I understand that might be a little difficult for some of you to understand, but if you ask really, really nicely, I'm sure that my sister can explain the concept to you."

When they reinstalled them one afternoon while she was out, she left them. After rendering them completely useless, of course. Finally, Colonel Simmons paid her a visit.

"Miss Carter, you are interfering with military orders," the colonel told her, his voice cold and hard.

"I haven't interfered with anything." Elizabeth smirked at him. Well aware of military law, she knew what she could and could not get away with. "I made my wishes clear. I live here with my sister. My friends and my girlfriend spend a lot of time here. I have no intention of any of us becoming the feature productions in your whack-off competitions. Your people installed them anyway, and so I removed them. Then, you broke into my house and installed them again, so now that couple million dollars worth of equipment, give or take, is now pretty much garbage."

"I can have you arrested!" Simmons sputtered furiously.

"And I can have you exposed." She shot back, not intimidated. "You have no idea what proof our 'visitor' left, or what I may or may not have done with it. And before you say something truly stupid, know this: Carters don't bluff."

Colonel Frank Simmons stared at this impudent little bitch, not bothering to hide his feelings. He hated the whole damn family. The Carters had been the bane of his existence for the majority of his military career. First Jacob Carter gets the promotion that _he_ deserved, then Samantha Carter foils him at every turn in his efforts with the NID, and now this little brat was keeping him from detaining quite possibly the most important fount of knowledge they would ever have the opportunity to interrogate. "Now, you listen here..."

"Save it." She interrupted him. "I haven't done anything in regards to the stooges that you've got holed up in the two houses down the street, but that's as far as you're going to get. Install that shit in here again, and I promise that you won't be the only ones watching. I'll patch the feeds into every news station across the country, live and streaming, and then my girlfriend and I will put on a show that I can guarantee will gather everyone's attention, _and_ I'll make sure that it's clear just who they can thank for the unintentional viewing into our private life."

They got the message and left it alone after that. Instead, they turned their attentions back to the device on Velona and attempting to make it work, while at home, Elizabeth and Orlin devised a plan that would keep them from doing just that.

After they finally gave up trying to bug the house, Orlin returned and told Elizabeth the rest his story. She immediately called Sam. She used her computer and webcam in the basement since it had concrete walls that external listening devices couldn't penetrate.

"You can't let them turn that thing on, Sam. Orlin said that the others made sure that no Velonan would ever use it again, and would do the same to whoever activated it."

"There's nothing that I can do, Eli." Sam told her. "My superiors won't listen to an alien who won't even reveal himself to them. We've already found a way to bypass the damaged circuitry and to configure the device to use one of our 'special' generators for a power source. Unless you can give me a valid reason, or convince Orlin to come in and tell them personally, they are going to make us turn the device on and test it."

"God damn it, Sam!" Elizabeth exploded. "You want a _valid_ reason, then how about this! The _Ascended_ were the ones that wiped out the Velonans. They didn't sabotage the weapon to make it inoperable. Orlin did that. Hell, it probably didn't even occur to them. Instead, the others wiped out an entire planet full of people, just to make sure that no one could ever use it again. They exiled Orlin because what he did with the Velonans drew the attention of someone _more powerful _than they were, and they were told to fix it, or else. Sam, they were so afraid of someone that they wiped out an entire planet and left him there, in that mass graveyard, because he helped them, and they warned him that the same would happen to any who activated the weapon again. That's when he fried the circuits. He never anticipated someone like you, Sam, who could figure out a way around the damage he'd done."

Sam stared at her in horror. Flustered, her mouth opened and closed a few times in pure shock. "Eli, it's too late. I wasn't the only one working on this issue. All the plans and schematics have been drawn up. They really don't need me to proceed."

"Can't you talk to someone?" Elizabeth practically begged. "Jack or Uncle George or, hell, even Jacob. Someone there _has_ to be able to put a stop to this."

"I'll try." Sam nodded firmly.

"Fine. You work from your end, and Orlin and I will work on a backup plan."

"What are you planning, Eli?" Sam asked, a little worriedly. Her sister was capable of anything when she felt the situation called for it.

"You know me, Sammie." The younger Carter gave her a quirky grin that she had learned long ago to be very, very wary of. "It'll be better if you don't know."

"That's what I'm worried about." Sam murmured to her darkened screen as Elizabeth cut their connection.

~~~ BtVS ~~ SG-1 ~~~

Elizabeth closed the communication to Sam before her sister could respond. She glanced up at Orlin as she quickly typed. "I figure we've got two days, max, before they talk themselves into attempting to activate the weapon despite Sam's warnings."

"We are going to have to go back to Velona and completely destroy the weapon."

"How?" She asked him. "It's not like we can just walk into the base and ask to use the Stargate."

He came around and sat down in the chair next to her. "I have been studying the progress your people have made on this world. There are adequate materials here to make a rudimentary Stargate of our own. The main problem will be a power source."

"How much power are we talking about?" Elizabeth turned to him, her mind already considering possibilities.

"If we were to build and power it now, it would cause a blackout of most of this region."

"That much, huh?" She said absently, her mind already calculating the needed voltage. "What about a Telsa coil? A table top coil can give off as much as 250 thousand volts, so if we build about four or five of them at twice that size, and feed the output directly into your 'Gate, we should be able to get the necessary power without taking out the city."

"That is an interesting approach." Orlin commented.

"We have to use parts that we can purchase, parts that won't draw attention." Elizabeth answered his unspoken question. "It isn't all that strange for someone like me, in the Science field, to be building Tesla coils. Now, if I were to buy the parts needed to possibly build an industrial generator, that would draw someone's attention, and the military is already staking out the house, looking for you."

Orlin nodded in understanding.

"Don't worry about it," she told him, turning back to her computer. "I might not be able to build a generator with the stuff I've got, but I can make some very effective incendiary bombs. A few of them shoved inside your weapon, and voilá, problem solved."

For the next few minutes, the only sound in the basement was the clattering of computer keys. "I'm uploading a virus into Sam's systems to shut down the Stargate facility if they dial Velona. We don't want them showing up before we've destroyed the device. After I'm done, we'll go out and get what you need to build your 'gate."

Deducing that the military was probably watching the family accounts, Elizabeth created a dummy company in order to purchase the needed supplies over the Internet. She almost wished that she could see their faces when the delivery truck dropped off the rather large box. She knew that Sam wouldn't think anything of it, since it wasn't the first time she'd had equipment delivered to the house for one of her projects.

They worked non-stop, careful to keep Sam out of the loop on the rare times that she made it home, even going so far as to keep her basement lab secured and temporarily disabling Sam's emergency access codes. Which Sam never found out since she really didn't want to know what Elizabeth was planning and figured 'plausible deniability' worked for everyone.

They finished just in time. Elizabeth was sending a low level current through the relays that connected the coils to the homemade gate, to make sure they were connecting properly, when her computer beeped at her. One of the flags that she had left in the Stargate computers had popped up an alert on the mission briefing reports for the next sojourn to P4X-636, their alphanumeric designation for Velona.

"All right, Orlin." Elizabeth turned to her friend. "We're all set. When they try to dial Velona, the entire system will go down temporarily. It won't take Sam very long to figure out that I had something to do with it, so we'll have to move fast. Those military surveillance guys are still in those houses down the street."

"We must prepare you, Elizabeth." Orlin stepped up to stand before her.

"Huh?" She blinked up at him, her confusion evident in her eyes. "What are you talking about?"

"Your senses are far more advanced than the average human's. Traveling through the wormhole compresses the body and, although the average human will not feel the difference, it will affect _your_ senses in an extreme way."

"Well shit, there's a complication I didn't see coming."


	6. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Elizabeth closed her eyes as Orlin kissed her tenderly on the cheek. When she opened them again, he had already returned to his Ascended form, although she could still make out the vague outline of his face.

"Goodbye, Orlin." She smiled at him.

"Farewell, Elizabeth." His voice resonated softly from the glowing form. "It has been a rare pleasure to know you. I was wondering, however, if I could 'communicate' with you in the way of my people?"

"That sharing thing that knocked Sam out?" Elizabeth shook her head. "My nervous system is extremely sensitive, and altering my brain chemistry is dangerous."

Elizabeth could almost feel his amusement as he answered. "Elizabeth, I would never bring you pain. Trust me. Please."

Elizabeth considered it carefully before slowly nodding. Her eyes fluttered closed as he drifted closer, radiating a calming warmth. She felt them merge together, then there was this sense of unbelievable _vastness_, then it was over. Elizabeth was nearly gasping in awe when she finally opened her eyes again. It was the most intimate experience she'd ever had that didn't actually include sex.

"Wow," she murmured, swaying slightly. "That was intense."

"Please tell Samantha that I enjoyed the time that I spent with you both, and that I will remember you always."

"We'll miss you too, Orlin."

Elizabeth watched a little sadly as Orlin disappeared through the Stargate, then she sat down on the steps of the building that housed the now completely useless weapon, and began to meditate. She was going to need it for the trip back through the 'gate.

~~~ BtVS ~~ SG-1 ~~~

"ELIZABETH ANNE CARTER!" Jack bellowed as soon as he walked down the steps of the Stargate. "You are in SO much trouble, young lady!"

His anger turned to worry when she didn't immediately respond. Glancing quickly back at Carter, they made their way to the building where the weapon was. They found Elizabeth sitting ramrod straight in a lotus position with her eyes closed and her hands resting on her knees. Sam immediately knelt down next to her.

"She's meditating, sir." She told her CO. "She's fine."

Reassured, his anger surged back into place. "Well, she'd better have a damn good explanation for compromising our security."

"I almost hate to say it, sir," Sam began. "but Eli _always_ has a good reason for her more outrageous stunts."

"Go check the weapon." Jack ordered them. "I want to know exactly what she did to it."

Giving her sister an almost sympathetic glance, Sam left with Daniel and Teal'c. Jack looked down at Elizabeth. His anger warred with how proud he was of her. To be honest, she hadn't done anything that he wouldn't have done, especially after what Sam had told them of exactly who had killed off the original people of this planet. He sat down next to her, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He already knew, even before he'd sent the others, that the device was useless now. After all, Elizabeth had come here to destroy it, in a probably misguided effort to save all of their lives. Kinsey and Simmons wouldn't care why she had done what she did. Simmons was foaming at the mouth at the prospect of throwing a Carter into Leavenworth. It was his dream come true. Jack suspected that he was on the phone with Kinsey the moment the power came back on.

"Hi, Jack," Elizabeth's soft voice broke his thoughts.

"Eli, have you lost your mind?" The question was asked with resignation instead of anger. "The Ascended are our _allies_. They wouldn't have just killed us all off for protecting ourselves. Besides, they don't get involved with lesser species."

"All of the Ascended?" Elizabeth asked pointedly. "Can you really vouch for every Ascended out there?"

Jack blinked in surprise and his mouth dropped open. He hadn't thought of it that way.

"Orlin told us that he had no idea who Oma Desala was," Elizabeth continued, trying to make him understand what she'd figured out. "That means that either Oma Desala was part of another 'faction', like the US Army versus the British Army, or there are other Ascended that came before Oma Desala. Can we really say that they all believe in not interfering, especially since none of this would have even been possible if Orlin hadn't 'interfered'. I don't think this is simply about using a weapon. I think it's more about using a weapon that an Ascended had a hand in creating, however abstract that help was. If the Velonans had built the weapon themselves, without Orlin's help, I doubt any of this would have garnered any attention. C'mon, Jack, use those smarts that you pretend not to have."

"Besides, it wasn't the Ascended that I was worried about." Elizabeth admitted, looking up at the empty sky. "It's whoever _they_ were afraid of."

Considering the situation from that angle, Jack found that he couldn't disagree with her. It was like saying that everyone held to the values of SG-1, when the NID had already proved that not to be the case. He sighed deeply. "You realize that this is going to be hell and a half to explain to the General and Joint Chiefs, right?"

"I'm sorry, Jack," she told him, truly regretful for the problems that she was causing for her family, and not just Sam.

He finally shrugged. "We've done worse. So tell me, just when _did_ you find out the truth?"

Elizabeth laid her head on arms folded over her knees as she turned pale blue eyes to him. "After the Jolinar incident. Sam was so depressed that I was getting really worried, and I needed to know exactly what was wrong if I was going to help her. After that, I kept abreast of the important stuff, like Jacob becoming Tok'ra and that situation where Sam's consciousness was downloaded."

"You can't be doing shit like that, Eli," Jack objected. "If you're caught, they'll lock you up in a federal pen and you'll never see the light of day again. You'll be damned lucky if that doesn't happen this time."

Elizabeth's eyes went silvery in sudden anger. "You don't see her when she comes home sometimes, Jack! Sometimes she gets this blank look in her eyes or this tortured expression on her face that scares the shit out of me. She has nightmares where she cries out for our mom! I've known that 'Deep Space Telemetry' was a cover story from the beginning, and I respect her and you guys and Uncle George enough not to make trouble, but I have to be able to help her even when she can't tell me _why_ she needs help and sometimes that means that I have to find out on my own."

"Thank you."

Both Jack and Elizabeth twisted around to see the rest of SG-1 standing behind them. They had been so caught up in their argument that even Elizabeth's enhanced senses had missed their approach. Sam stepped forward, knelt behind her sister and hugged her fiercely. Kissing the back of her head, she stood and turned to her commanding officer. "The device is completely destroyed sir. It looks like she used napalm."

Jack glared at the younger Carter. "Where the hell did you get napalm?"

"It wasn't napalm." Elizabeth grinned impudently. "I made something similar to Greek Fire. I was going to use some homemade incendiary bombs, but Orlin wanted the overall structure of the weapon to remain standing as something of a memorial. He thought that he was going to have to continue his exile, but the other Ascended decided that he'd adequately atoned."

"Fine." Jack said, not knowing how else to respond. "Let's go back then. Carter, dial home."

They all watched as the Stargate connected with a whoosh, but just before entering next to Sam, Elizabeth hesitated. "Um, Sam, there's something I need to tell you."

~~~ BtVS ~~ SG-1 ~~~

On the other side, Elizabeth fell to her knees with a moan as her senses expanded sharply and painfully after being so tightly compressed. Sam, who had been beside her, immediately went down right next to her, keeping physical contact to give her sister something tangible to focus on as her senses readjusted. Just before they had entered the event horizon, Elizabeth had told her how Orlin had shielded her for the first trip, but without him, she didn't know how she would react. Hearing the pained sound, the others immediately turned to back to her just as the 'gate shut down. Seeing them from the control room, General Hammond quickly summoned Doctor Fraiser.

"I want that girl in handcuffs." Colonel Simmons demanded angrily.

"Well, you're just going to have to wait until she has been medically cleared." General Hammond responded almost placidly. Simmons was one of the few people that Hammond truly loathed, second only to Kinsey, and he took genuine pleasure in thwarting them both whenever he could. He turned to Simmons thoughtfully. "Besides, what makes you think you can demand anything on my base, _Colonel_?"

It was only moments before Janet ran into the embarkation room. She rushed to Elizabeth's side without hesitation. "Elizabeth, what on Earth are you doing here? How did you even get here?"

"She was on P4X-636." Sam answered. "We're not exactly sure how she got there yet, but gate travel seems to have an adverse affect on her heightened senses."

"Just give me a minute." Elizabeth gasped. "I'll be all right."

"C'mon, people, let's get her to the infirmary."

Without speaking, Teal'c swept the young woman into his arms and carried her effortlessly out of the door, Sam and Janet close behind. Jack lingered behind, looked up at the window to the control room to lock eyes with the General and shook his head slightly. Hammond gave an internal sigh. The destruction of the weapon would not go in Elizabeth's favor, even though they knew that had been why she was there.

After running a few tests, Janet informed SG-1 that Elizabeth would be fine. The younger Carter had explained to her doctor what she knew, but there was nothing that Janet could do for her to help ease the pain because it wasn't a physical, or even psychological malady. After giving her the standard post-op examination and reluctantly discharging her, Janet took her to the briefing room, where Jack and the others had gone after Janet's firm reassurances.

The debriefing had taken hours. The moment she stepped into the room, Colonel Simmons had begun blustering about federal charges, and Elizabeth immediately demanded a lawyer. After the General had smoothed over that wrinkle, Elizabeth admitted that she had hacked their systems quite some time ago, but not through Sam's computers, as Simmons had fervently hoped, wanting to get both Carters at the same time. Instead, she had piggybacked a satellite signal and maneuvered carefully through the traps and triggers that Sam had meticulously sprinkled randomly throughout the system. Until now, she had kept her searches limited to anything regarding her sister.

The program that she had used to shut down the SGC had been a work of art. It had closed and locked the iris, completely secured the network and jammed all signals out of the base. The only things that had been working were the internal communications and the lights. They couldn't even make cellphone calls.

"Oh, Colonel," Elizabeth said sweetly to the fuming man. "If you tell your men to be patient, Sam can let you into my lab to get the Stargate that Orlin and I built. You won't like the results if you break into it. My servers are set to crash if my lab is broken into and even your best retrievers won't be able to recover anything."

"Sir, if she's built one already, then she could do it again." Sam said quickly before Simmons could utter the scathing retort that they could see forming on his lips. "If she made the schematics, they'll be on her servers."

"Damn it!" Simmons grabbed the phone to call off the men that he'd sent in the moment external communications were possible again.

After that, Elizabeth was surprisingly forthcoming. She told them everything that she had learned from Orlin, leaving absolutely nothing out. When she explained her actions to General Hammond, she used the same reasoning that she had given to Jack back on the planet. Just because Earth was allied with one of the Ascended, didn't mean that they were allied with them all, and Velona gave stark evidence even though the Ancients themselves were non-aggressive, there was something else out there, much more powerful, and not nearly as peaceful.

During the debriefing, Elizabeth's stomach began growling fiercely and, knowing Elizabeth's metabolism, Janet sent for something substantial to eat. Her food arrived just as she finished speaking and the young girl dug in with enthusiasm.

Pleasantly full, Elizabeth glanced at her sister and the people that she worked with as she pushed the empty plate away and laid her head down on the table. She hadn't meant to fall asleep, but with everything that had happened, she was exhausted. She found herself barging into a small apartment. She caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror and would have gawked if she'd had control of her own body. She didn't look quite like herself. She was several inches shorter, her blonde hair had dark roots and her eyes were a hazel color instead of blue.

"_Giles!" she yelled, looking around. "Giles!!"_

"_I don't think he's here__," a__ man said from behind her._

_She spun around. "Who are you?"_

"_The name's..."_

Suddenly, Elizabeth felt herself being shaken and heard her name being called. Her eyes snapped open and one word escaped her.

"Whistler."


	7. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

"Took you long enough, Slayer." A badly dressed, clearly _not_ human, 'person' appeared on the opposite side of the table. He was red-skinned with black horns and completely black eyes.

Elizabeth didn't respond as the last of her memories finally broke free, playing through her mind. She had been Buffy Summers, the Vampire Slayer. The Chosen One. She remembered her mom, her sister, her best friends, and her worst enemies. She even remembered her death.

"Who are you and how did you get in here?" General Hammond demanded. Sam and Daniel were staring at the man in shock and Jack had immediately pressed the intruder alert button that he'd been standing next to when he'd heard the unfamiliar voice. Teal'c was on his feet ready to move, but waiting.

"Everybody relax," the stranger advised. "This is between me and the Slayer."

Sam's attention suddenly refocused on her sister when Elizabeth whimpered. She immediately recognized the symptoms of her overloading as Elizabeth pressed her hands to her head and began to tremble. Without preamble, she grabbed Daniel and shoved him towards the door. "Go get Janet."

"Focus on my voice, Eli," Sam said, kneeling next to her chair. "C'mon, honey, you can do it."

Ignoring everything around her, Sam concentrated on helping her sister. Therefore, she didn't see Daniel struggling to open the door that wasn't budging, she didn't hear the stranger tell the others that no one outside the briefing room had any idea of what was taking place, even the surveillance, nor did she know just when he'd moved around the table to stand next to Elizabeth.

"Here ya go, Slayer," he said, touching her head. "I see you got that blonde hair you always wanted."

Elizabeth instantly relaxed as the cacophony in her head lessened. "Damn it, Whistler, what did they do to me?" She looked up at him, and her brow rose. "Is that what you really look like?"

"Sorry, Slayer," he shrugged. "It was the only way we could give you back your abilities. Well, most of them, anyway, but the process clearly isn't complete yet. We started it, but those here will finish it. Since magic has very little sway on the Fundamental Laws of this particular dimension, we couldn't just dump you here still a Slayer. Bad things would have happened to balance out the equation. So, you had to be born like this. Even though it's a little rough, you gotta admit, the brain boost is one hell of a bonus side effect. I know that the whole dumb blonde image was just that, an image, and a stupid one at that, but you weren't anywhere near this smart. And no, this isn't what I look like, but I figured that they'd believe a lot faster if I didn't look human." With another shrug, his 'unusual' features melted back into the form of a human male.

"So... I was really born here, not just inserted like Dawn?"

"That's right, kiddo." He swung his arms out in a grand gesture. "You got the works, Slayer. A whole new life. They didn't want there to be any chance that the witch could fall back on her original idea to pull you back. Hell, it would have been easier if it had been done the other way, but we couldn't take the chance the risk of Entropic Cascade Failure since there's already a Buffy Summers and a Faith Lehane here. You would not believe the negotiations necessary to insert the two of you into the past like we did, especially since you're alternates do exist here."

"How are the others, Whistler?" Elizabeth asked. "Did you manage to keep an eye on them like I asked?"

"They're good. Your vampire protected the Key just like you asked, even went so far as to follow her when she went to live with your aunt. She's attending NYU now. The Red Witch listened, really listened, to what you told her, and let her girlfriend teach her the Wiccan ways. Together, they're a powerful force of Light, and have become minor champions in their own right. They also moved to New York to be closer to little sis. The boy stayed with the Watcher, to be trained and one day succeed him. The Slayer Called after the Dark One flourished under Giles' tutelage. She's managed to gather a clique of her own, and is now going on three years. The Watcher's Council has been forced to realize that you just might have something there with the whole 'non-isolation' idea."

She smiled tiredly, happy that her family were doing well. Then, Whistler snapped his fingers, and Janet and Jordan appeared in the room. Jordan went into an instinctive defensive position in front of Janet. "What the fuck?"

"Well, she sure hasn't changed much, has she?" Whistler commented dryly.

"Why did you bring her here, Whistler?" Elizabeth demanded even as Jordan relaxed as she recognized _most_ of the people in the room.

"The Powers have decided that she still must atone," he informed her. "To do that, she's going to need her memories back as well. She will fight at your side as she was always meant to."

In a flash, Elizabeth was on her feet and pinning the balance demon on the table with a hand around his throat. "That wasn't the agreement."

While she wasn't nearly as strong as she had been when she was a Slayer, she was still stronger than the average human. It was the one real inexplicable oddity about her. Oddly enough, or maybe not when she thought about it now, the same could be said about Jordan. Still, she was no longer a match for the demon.

"You can't always have it your way, Slayer," Whistler told her, shoving her arm away and getting back to his feet, making a show of straightening his coat. "Be thankful you were allowed to bring her here at all. It's gonna happen whether you want it to or not, so just let me do this. I'll put her to sleep and release her memories that way. Ease her into it, so to speak."

Elizabeth ground her teeth in frustration as she realized that there was nothing she could do to get Jordan out of this. "Fine, just, just give me a minute with her, okay?"

"Sure, Slayer, go ahead."

"Elizabeth, what's going on here?" Sam asked.

Elizabeth looked at her. "Give me a few minutes, Sam. I'll tell you guys everything as soon as I get this settled."

They had no choice but to accept that since she'd already turned her attention to her girlfriend. Taking Jordan by the hand, she led the girl to the other end of the room, to give them as much privacy as they could get.

"Eli, what the fuck is going on?" Jordan demanded. "Where are we, and who's that asshole?"

"Our lives are a bit more complicated than we've ever imagined," Elizabeth told her. "You'll understand in a little bit. I know that you're going to be pissed at me when you wake up, but I need you to know that I did it to give you a second chance. Okay?"

Confused, Jordan nodded, not really knowing what else to do.

"I love you, Jordan," Elizabeth told her, kissing her in near desperation before they returned to where Whistler was waiting. "Please don't forget that."

Whistler told her to sit in the chair. He touched her temple lightly and, just like that, she was out. "Just so you know, just like we told you every little detail of her life to make sure you knew what you were getting into with her, she's getting the same deal. When she wakes, she'll know everything there was to know about Buffy Summers, including everything about the agreement you made with The Powers.

Elizabeth nodded. "I can live with that."

"All right, Eli," Sam said firmly. "Start talking. Who is this man, and what is going on?"

"And it had better be good if it involves Jordan as well," Janet stated in a flat voice that she only used when she was getting well and truly pissed off. It was a voice that they _all_ respected. Jack didn't call her a Napoleonic Power Monger for nothing.

Elizabeth nodded and sat down next to Jordan, tangling her fingers in her dark hair, maybe for the last time. Faith wasn't known for her forgiving nature, and Buffy hadn't been given the opportunity to ask the Dark Slayer if she wanted to leave their dimension when she struck the deal with The Powers.

"I had another life before this one," she began. "So did Jordan."

"What? Like reincarnation?" Daniel asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"It's actually a little more complicated than that, Danny. We were Champions, like you guys are. We fought the things that wanted to eat, kill or enslave humans, although in our case it was vampires and demons rather than aliens and robot bugs."

"Eli, that's impossible," Sam stated firmly. "There's no such things as vampires or demons."

"Not so much here, no, but in our old dimension, the Fundamental Laws of Nature allowed for the supernatural, good and bad, and that included vampires, werewolves, demons and even magick. We were created to fight them and protect the humans."

"Are you telling us that you're from an alternate reality?" Sam demanded.

"No." Elizabeth shook her head. "Elizabeth Carter and Jordan Fraiser were born here. Buffy Summers and Faith Lehane are from a completely different dimension. Unlike alternate realities, the only way to travel to different dimensions are through magickal portals or higher beings."

"Created how? How is _any_ of this possible?" Daniel asked. Everyone was now sitting, even Whistler, who was content to let her tell the story.

Elizabeth recited the whole Slayer spiel and the true origin of their old world for them, then went into the specifics of her previous life as Buffy Summers. She told them about her mom and Giles and her best friends, and Angel. Her first death at the hands, and fangs, of the Master. Her sister and the events that lead to her second death, which brought to them to this point. Finally, she told them about Faith. That's when Whistler spoke up.

"The thing you need to understand about the Dark Slayer was that she was already seriously screwed up by the time her first Watcher found her. Diana did a good job in mitigating the worst of her psychological damage before she was called, but then she was killed by Kakistos." He turned to Buffy. "That's something else we need to discuss. There are things that I've finally been authorized to tell you, since there's no longer anything anyone can do about it." He then turned to Janet. "The main difference between the Dark Slayer and your sister-in-law is that this one had someone to turn to when she ran away, instead of being forced to do whatever was necessary to survive on the streets, and it helped that you did us all the supreme favor of _not_ being brutally murdered right before her eyes."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "Can you show them something, Whistler? So that they'll have an idea of what we're talking about."

"Come on now, Slayer. I've already told you that this dimension isn't big on the magic."

She shrugged, unconcerned. "That would be a valid excuse if we were still in that dimension."

He sighed. "How did you know?"

"My senses are all souped up, remember?" She smirked at him. "I felt it the moment you moved us. It's partly why I overloaded. Where are we anyway?"

"It's a kind of 'limbo' dimension," he told her. "Time is suspended here. We can talk as long as we need to, and I can put you back in the exact moment that I took you from."

"What are you talking about now?" Jack demanded.

"Open the blast doors, Whistler." Elizabeth told the balance demon. "Let them see."

The members of Stargate Command spun around at the sound of the metal covering raising from the windows that overlooked the Embarkation room. Every eyes went wide at the vast expanse of 'nothingness' on the other side. Whistler closed the doors once again and, when they finally turned their attention back to him, he gestured to the television and it flickered on. It showed a petite blonde and a slightly taller brunette fighting a horrifying looking creature with deformed facial features, fangs instead of teeth, and cloven feet and hands.

"That's us when we were fighting Kakistos, the Master Vampire that had killed Faith's first Watcher and chased her from Boston to Sunnydale."

"Why did she call you B?" Sam asked.

"My name was Buffy Summers. She's wasn't very good at calling people by their actual names. That's something that seems to have leaked over to Jordan. They both called Willow 'Red', Tara 'Blondie' and Alex 'X-Man,' although there, we called him Xander."

"How _did_ you manage to gather your groupies again?" Whistler asked her. "That shocked a whole lot of us."

"You're asking me like I'm supposed to know?" Elizabeth gave him an arch look. "Maybe we're all simply destined to always be best friends."

"Wait a god-damned minute!" Jack suddenly snapped. "How freaking old were you girls right then? You don't even look old enough to drink!"

Elizabeth's eyes widened. "Uh oh. Ahh, Whistler, you might want to get over to the other side of the room." She faced Jack. "Slayers are Called young Jack. I was fifteen when I was Called, and Faith was seventeen."

Jack turned to Whistler, his eyes blazing with fury. "You've got _children_ fighting a WAR!!!" He advanced on the balance demon. "What is WRONG with you people?"

He was halfway across the room when a bolt of lightning struck the ground just in front of him, sending him stumbling backwards.

Elizabeth had to call his name twice to get his attention. "I talked to Giles about it once. Apparently, Slayers were made when the human life span was only about 30-40 years, at best. By the time that changed, altering the Slayer Line would have created more problems than it would have solved."

"Where is the military in this 'dimension'?" Jack demanded, still not satisfied.

Elizabeth gave Whistler a telling look, and with a resigned sigh, he gestured to the tv again. The image flickered to a scene where a magickally enhanced Buffy was facing off against a monstrosity that looked like a Frankenstein creation of machine, human and monster.

"That was ADAM. He was created by a scientist who posed as a college Psychology professor, which was funny since she was absolutely nuts. She was a part of a government project to hunt and capture subterrestrial species that they called Hostiles, run by the Army. Those that weren't immediately destroyed were taken to a secret facility underneath the college and experimented on. Professor Walsh created ADAM using human parts, demon parts and cybernetic technology, and powered him with a uranium power core."

Sam gasped. "Holy Hannah, she _was_ nuts!"

"Carter?" Jack looked at his 2IC.

"Uranium has _radioactive _properties, sir."

"In other words, Jack," Elizabeth interrupted. "Professor Walsh created a walking, talking sociopathic _nuclear bomb_, that ended up killing her and about 40% of their personnel in an attempt to create more like him. _That's_ what the military did when they found out."

Jack sat down, not really having anything to counter that. Elizabeth pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, her head still trying to compartmentalize all the additional information. Sam noticed immediately. "Eli, are you all right?"

"Still processing." She said tiredly. "My head hurts and I'm wiped."

"Want me to put you out, Slayer?" Whistler offered. "The Powers are releasing the last bit of information that had been withheld until you regained your memories, so that you'll know what's coming and what you'll be expected to do. It'll go a lot smoother if you were asleep like her."

"You'll finish explaining things to them?" Elizabeth asked. The fact that she was even entertaining the idea told both Sam and Whistler how much she really was hurting.

"Yeah, Slayer." Whistler nodded, reaching for her. "I'll make sure that they understand."

She grabbed his wrist just before he touched her. "Make sure that I wake up before Jordan. She'll freak out with those new memories."

Whistler nodded and touched her temple gently. Instantly, she was asleep. He looked around at the others. "All right, people, gather around the tube. I'm going to show you the lives of Buffy Summers and Faith Lehane."

**A/N:** Believe it or not, in this universe, Buffy Summers ended up with Faith Lehane. After her parents divorced, Joyce moved them to Boston, where Buffy stumbled across an unconscious and barely breathing junkie and took her to the hospital. Faith had OD'd on cocaine and alcohol and nearly died. It was enough to shake her confidence and, with Buffy & Joyce's support, got herself cleaned up. They got her back into high school and both graduated and are currently attending Boston U together (they were born two years earlier than in the Buffyverse).

**Author's Request:** Tell me what you think. Be honest, but no flames please. I want to know if this reads well to anyone but me. :D


	8. Chapter Seven

**A/N:** To anyone who hasn't figured it out by now, the pairing of Buffy/Faith, is actually Elizabeth (Buffy)/Jordan (Faith)

Chapter Seven

The story was incredible. The things that both girls had been through were unbelievable, and they watched it all on the television as if it had been some action flick.

Buffy Summers had given her life for her Earth not once, but twice, the second time saving her sister in the process. Higher beings that called themselves The Powers That Be had agreed that she could not be allowed to return from death a second time. They had watched as the one called Whistler explained the situation to her. He explained to her that if she accepted her Final Reward now, her grief-stricken best friend would delve deeper and deeper into 'black magick' in an attempt to rescue her, believing that she'd been sent to a 'hell dimension'. He told her how the counterbalance of forcing open the usually impenetrable heavenly dimensions would be the release of an evil unlike anything they had ever faced before.

Sam's thoughts broke off when she heard a whimper from the other end of the table where the girls were. Jordan was shifting in agitation in her sleep and, even though she was still asleep herself, Elizabeth reached over and entwined their fingers together, unconsciously giving what comfort she could. As usual, Jordan calmed down almost instantly at Elizabeth's touch. It had been like that between them from the very beginning.

Her mind turned back to her contemplations. She couldn't believe it when she'd seen that witch they'd been referring to had been none other than Willow Hallwell, one of Elizabeth's best friends. In that other dimension, her name had been Willow Rosenberg. The two girls were so different, as were the two Alexanders and the two Taras. In that dimension, Willow and Alexander were childhood best friends, not twins as they were here. Buffy Summers had moved into their town instead of them moving to hers. Sam was aghast to see what Tara could have been like if Diana hadn't left her husband the first time he'd hit her.

They had been returned to Cheyenne Mountain and Whistler had disappeared with a reassurance that the girls would be waking soon. He looked a little worried when he said that, and when Daniel asked what was wrong, he said that slayers tended to get violent when they heard bad news, and since he was usually the messenger, he was the one that got beat up. So, the moment the girls' sleep began to get restless, he wrote a short note in an indecipherable script, and promptly said his goodbyes.

"No." Elizabeth whimpered in her sleep before her eyes blinked open and she sighed sadly. "Oh, Faith, I'm sorry."

"What's the matter, Eli?" Sam asked.

"We were always supposed to be fighting side by side." Elizabeth told her sister. "Apparantly, there was some big prophecy regarding the emergence of two Slayers that went into affect the moment Xander revived me after the Master. She was my counterbalance. We were like opposite sides of the same coin, or something metaphorical like that. God, if we had stayed together, we could have closed the Hellmouth so much sooner."

"What happened?"

"The Senior Partners, and our own pride."

"The Senior Partners?"

"They're the counterparts of the Powers. They sent Kakistos after Faith, hoping to kill her before she was drawn to me. When that failed, they arranged to have Angel sent back, knowing that I would gravitate right back to him and cut off the attraction I was feeling for her. The tensions caused by my hiding his return was just an added bonus. Then, to top it off, they had Mayor Wilkins send Finch to that alley that night, knowing that Faith is a 'strike first, realize that you should have asked questions only when it comes back to bite you in the ass' type of fighter."

"A what?" Sam asked, confused.

"Get some, get gone was Faith's philosophy, and it governed more than just her love life. She tended to strike first, strike hard, and move on. That's what happened with Finch. We had been ambushed in that alley, and were fighting for our lives. When he came up on us, Faith had him staked before we could even registered that there was another heartbeat in the area. After that, it all kinda of spiraled out of control."

"Well, why didn't these 'Powers' help you or warn you or, or _something_!"

"They couldn't." Elizabeth told her with a sigh. "The Powers couldn't get involved because the Partners never actually 'interfered'. They merely directed their followers what traps to set. We were the ones that walked into them. Even though neither side is supposed to get involved in 'Earthbound' affairs, the Partners are the bad guys, so they cheat, but they always careful to stop just short of crossing the line where the Powers could get actively involved."

Elizabeth opened her mouth to continue, but turned abruptly towards her girlfriend when she felt Jordan's pulse pound even harder than it had been where their wrists were pressed together. The fingers clasping her own convulsed squeezed, and Elizabeth grimaced slightly in pain.

"NO!!" Jordan shouted furiously as she jumped to her feet, her eyes wild and unfocused.

Elizabeth jumped up with her. "Jordan, wake up!"

"Damn you, B!" Jordan swung at her.

Elizabeth blocked the flurry of blows with ease as Sam watched in horror. She wanted to jump in but suspected that anything she did would only make the situation worse. Thankfully, she was near the door, so she intercepted the MPs when they rushed in at Jordan's yell.

"Go get General Hammond, SG-1 and Dr. Fraiser." She told one of them. "Keep everyone else out, and I mean everyone."

"Yes, sir!" They said, rushing back out.

When the others rushed into the room, they skidded to a stop with their mouths dropping open at the sight of the two girls fighting. Or rather, Jordan attacking Elizabeth, and Elizabeth merely kept blocking the rush of punches and kicks, calling Jordan's name all the while.

"What the hell?" Jack shouted. "Why haven't you stopped them, Carter?"

"She's basically still asleep, sir." Sam answered. "If I interfered, it could just make things worse."

Just as Jack was about to get involved anyway, Elizabeth suddenly ducked under another wild swung, stepped into Jordan's personal space and kissed her hard. Their watching family all had different reactions.

"Oh, for crying out loud!" Jack exclaimed as the General looked away. Both men knew that the girls were involved, but it wasn't something that they needed to see, since both men considered the girls family. Elizabeth was Hammond's Goddaughter and both girls considered Jack an unofficial 'uncle'.

Daniel blushed and tried to look away, but hey, it was two hot girls kissing and, despite the brotherly affection that he felt for them, neither were related to him by blood.

Sam and Janet rolled their eyes. This wasn't the first time a sparring match between the two had turned into a make-out session.

Teal'c merely watched impassively. Same sex relationships, while not encouraged, was not unheard of in the ranks of the Jaffa.

"Mmm, Eli." Jordan murmured, her aggression shifting instantly to passion as her hands automatically went south towards Elizabeth's ass.

Elizabeth reached back and grabbed her wrists before they made contact with her body as she broke the kiss. "Wake up, baby."

Jordan opened her eyes and gave her girlfriend a sultry, sleep-eyed look. Then she realized that she was standing, and not in either of their bedrooms. "Eli, what..." Then she remembered her dream. She closed her eyes and shuddered. "Damn, you won't believe the dream I just had."

Elizabeth touched her cheek gently to get her attention back. "I wasn't a dream, Jordan. It was real. It was us. Well, it was another us. You were Faith and I was Buffy."

Jordan looked horrified. "But... no, that couldn't... I'd never..."

Elizabeth hugged her tightly. She shook her head minutely at Janet when the doctor began to step forward. "Faith had problems, and she needed help, but I, when I was Buffy, was too wrapped up in my own drama to see it. I asked to bring you here with me because I knew that with me gone, the Council would most likely have you killed so that the next girl could be Called instead of trying to deal with you. I wanted you to have a better life, like I was getting. They let you come because a lot of what happened to you had been orchestrated by their counterparts to keep us from teaming up, but they decided that you still needed to atone, so they returned your memories as well. I'm sorry, honey."

Jordan buried her face in Elizabeth's neck as she tried to reconcile that she was once a convicted multiple murderer. "They showed me that, too." She pulled back to at her girlfriend with a small smile. "So, how does it feel to be the same height as normal people?"

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and pinched Jordan's side. Then, Jordan's gaze turned serious. "You know, I, I mean Faith, I mean... well whatever, thought you had the golden life. That was part of the problem. I didn't know that your dad talked your mom into having you institutionalized."

Sam's eyes widened in shock at that revelation. Well, that explained her aversion to psychiatrists.

Elizabeth looked away. Even now, that still hurt. "She was going to let me prove my story, but then he came with the doctors. He didn't even come to her funeral."

"I was bummed when I heard." Jordan said. It was obvious to the others that the girls were almost completely immersed in their newly recovered memories. "She was a special. You know, she came to see me once, and she was writing to me."

"I know. She's the one that told me how well you were doing, or else I'd have never considered bring you with me."

"Okay, ladies, do you maybe want to come back to _this_ reality?" Jack said loudly, startling them out of the memories.

"Oh, sorry Jack." Elizabeth looked a little abashed.

"Elizabeth, Whistler left this note for you." Sam handed it to her. Daniel caught a glimpse of the writing. It was in a script that he had never seen before, but as he watched, Elizabeth obviously had no problems reading it.

"Damn it, Whistler!" She shouted just before the alarms blared.

_*Unscheduled incoming wormhole.*_


	9. Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

"Walter!" General Hammond barked as they entered the control room.

"I don't know, sir!" Walter immediately responded even as he closed the iris and hit the alarm. "There was no indication of an incoming wormhole. All of the chevrons activated at once.."

Almost as soon as the steel barrier closed, it opened right back up. Military guards armed with M16 rifles flooded the room. After a moment, the event horizon rippled as a group stepped through. There were three men and two women.

"_Where are the Champions?"_ The woman in front demanded, paying little heed to the weapons aimed at them.

"What did they say, Daniel?" Jack recognized the language of the Ancients, having spoke when one of their databases had been downloaded into his mind, but he no longer understood it.

"I think they're looking for Elizabeth and Jordan." Daniel told him. To his better trained ear, it sounded like it was an earlier, more formal dialect of the Ancient language. It made him think that their language may have evolved from this one. "Remember that Whistler character said that they were Champions in their universe."

"Yeah, but Eli said that we were the Champions here." Jack shot right back.

"Jack, if we were the Champions that they were looking for, don't you think they would have come before now?" Daniel said reasonably.

Jack scowled at him. He didn't feel like being reasonable at the moment. Whatever was going on, was affecting his girls, and he didn't know if it was for the good or the bad.

They quieted as the group looked up at them, almost as if they had heard them speaking, and Daniel audibly gasped at the pure whiteness of their eyes. They started to walk down the ramp, but halted and looked at the men and women that surrounded them at the sound of the multitude of weapons being readied to fire. The leader raised her hand and, with a flash of light, a half dozen or so men were thrown backwards.

"Ribbon device!" Someone yelled, and someone else panicked and opened fire. Then the room was filled with the sound of gunfire.

None of which, however, that was reaching their invaders, who merely watched impassively as hail of bullets stopped inches before them as if hitting an invisible steel wall.

"Uncle George!" Elizabeth ran into the room. "You have to make them stop. They're not Goa'uld. They're _The Others_ that Orlin was talking about. Make them stop before they get pissed off."

"That sounds like more than enough reason to kill them." Jack said coldly.

She rounded on him. "Damn it, Jack, does it look like you're doing any damage? They're not here to hurt us. They're here to train us."

"What?" Sam and Daniel asked simultaneously.

"Make them stop and I'll explain."

Hammond clenched his jaw at her pleading look, but clicked on the mic. "Cease fire! Cease fire!" He turned to his godchild with a hard look. "This had better be good."

Elizabeth nodded. "Let me go and get them and we'll go back in the briefing room."

She ran back out before anyone could respond and, with a grunt of frustration, Jack motioned for the others and they followed her. They reached the lower corridor just in time to see two figures run into the embarkation room. "Damn, they're quick." Jack muttered.

They ran into the room in time to see Elizabeth push the through the last of the soldiers and stop in front of the group.

_"I'm sorry for their reactions."_ Elizabeth said quickly, in nearly fluent Ancient. _"The only beings to come through the gate unexpectedly have always been enemies."_

_"The Goa'uld."_ The woman nodded. _"We are aware."_

_"Yes."_ Elizabeth nodded. _"If you'll come with us, I can explain to them that you're not here to hurt anyone."_

_"Very well."_ The woman after a moment. _"We will not, however, remain long."_

Elizabeth took Jordan's hand as they led the group through the still tense soldiers up to General Hammond and SG-1. "We're ready, General."

Hammond gave her a questioning look at her use of his title, but nodded. "This way."

As they walked through the corridors, Daniel fell into step with Elizabeth. "How do you know how to speak the Ancient language?"

"Orlin was an Ancient, Danny." Elizabeth gave him a 'duh' look. "He taught me. Also, I think I may have picked up a little more than he intended when he mind-melded me."

Daniel nearly slapped himself. Of course he did. Elizabeth would have tried to learn everything she could from the exiled Ascended. His next question had everyone stopping for her answer. "Why didn't he get punished for teaching you, when he got punished for teaching the Velonans?"

"Because he didn't have to 'enhance' me." Elizabeth shrugged. "That's what drew the attentions of the Protectorate. None of the Velonans had reached the mental capacity to understand what Orlin was trying to accomplish, so he 'touched' one of the Velonan scientists, intentionally evolving the man so that he could 'nudge' him in the right direction to build the weapon necessary to defeat the Goa'uld. He didn't have the right, and he didn't know how to do it correctly."

"I still don't understand." Daniel admitted.

Janet, however, was beginning to. "He went mad, didn't he?" Elizabeth nodded. They resumed walking even as the doctor continued with her theory. "Evolution happens in stages for a reason. Even though spontaneous evolution does occur, it still occurs _naturally_. Forcing the evolution was too much for the man's mind. It's like what happened to Daniel during the dream Shifu gave him."

Then they understood, and Daniel blanched in horror. In that dream, Shifu had given him the genetic memory of the Goa'uld. It had been his intention to use the information to help protect Earth from the System Lords, and he had done just that, but then he had gone on to become just as bad, or worse, than the Goa'uld. He had killed his friends and used the knowledge to take over the world himself.

_"The child did well in his teaching."_ One of the men unexpectedly said. _"It was a most effective way to make you understand the threat of what you were asking."_

Daniel looked at him, startled. "You know Shifu? How is he?"

_"The boy prospers in his learning."_ The man answered. _"Soon, he will grow beyond those that you call 'the Ancients', and then he will take his place among the Protectorate."_

"The Protectorate?" Daniel had never heard the term. "What's that?"

"It's this dimension's version of the Powers." Elizabeth answered. "They mostly just correct what the others fuck up, and only get involved when the threat is universal. They are the ones that de-ascended Anubis. They are also the ones that destroyed the Velonans." She turned to look at the woman who was obviously in charge. "Which, by the way, was serious overkill. I know that those people were probably just a really small blip in your 'big picture', but the total eradication of an entire race was way over the top. Most of those people probably didn't even know that the weapon existed. I mean, 98% of the people on this entire planet don't even know that the Stargate exists or that there's life outside of this world. You can't condemn the whole for the actions of a few."

_"That was not our doing."_ The woman denied.

"Maybe not, but they did it because they were terrified of what you would do."

"Eli, how do you know all of this?" Sam asked incredulously.

"For once, the Powers made with the explanations. The Balance works differently here, and with the deal they had to make to put us in the past, the odds of them getting either of us back are slim to non-existent, so they felt they could give out the necessary info without the usual bullshit. Higher beings can't explain their rules to their own Champions, but apparently, they can explain someone else's rules. Loopholes, you gotta love 'em. Anyway, you guys are doing great with the snakes, but there's more out there, and that's what Jordan and I are going to be dealing with."

Suddenly, she realized what she had been explaining to them, and quickly turned to look at Jack. His expression had turned thunderous and he was grinding his teeth in rage.

"Jack, don't!" Elizabeth said, almost imploringly. "Nothing you say is going to change what's about to happen, and these aren't the pacifists that you've dealt with. Your opinion doesn't matter to them. They'll do what they feel they need to, regardless of how you feel about it, and their solutions to problems tend to be extreme and permanent. If you irritate them, you could be gone forever with barely a thought."

"What's about to happen?" Sam asked, more than a little worried.

But Janet already suspected. After all, they'd just been talking about it. Her eyes were wide as she looked from Elizabeth to Jordan and back again. "They're going to intentionally speed up your evolution."


	10. Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

"But isn't that what got the Velonans in trouble?" Daniel asked when Elizabeth nodded at Janet's deduction. "Why would they do that again?"

_"The fault was not in the Velonan."_ one of the beings said. _"The fault was in the Ascended. He had the power, but not the knowledge of what he was doing. Innumerable things must be altered to successfully do as he wished. We understand that his reasons were noble, but the results of his actions would have caused damage far beyond what he could have conceived if it were not handled immediately. The destruction of the Velonan race was unfortunate, but however, it was not as complete as both you and they believe."_

"What do you mean?" Daniel asked.

_"As the Champion decreed, it is not just for the whole to suffer for the mistakes of the few._" Another one answered. _"We took a small group and placed them outside of the Ancients' reach. Now that the last has taken leave of the planet, we will release them and place them safely back so that they can rebuild their race. They will remember the outcome of the battle with the Goa'uld, but will think that it was the weapon itself that caused the destruction of their people."_

Before Daniel could ask another question, Jack cut him off in irritation. "Daniel, how many times do we have to tell you that it's rude to hold conversations in languages that no one else understands?"

"Umm, sorry Jack." Daniel said sheepishly. "They said that not all of the Velonans were dead."

"As interesting as that is," General Hammond spoke up, "I think we should get back to why they have come here."

"Right!" Elizabeth jumped in. She turned to the members of the Protectorate. _"They want to know what you have planned for us. We have all just found out the about our origins, and we are a little skittish."_

"_Understandable."_ The Protectorate spokeswoman said. _"We will unlock your full potential that you were bequeathed upon your delivery into our dimension. Your physical abilities will be similar to that which you held as Slayers. You will have the power to stand against those that would cause others to falter."_

"Why?" Sam demanded as Daniel translated for everyone else, including Jordan. "After everything that they went through before, why make them fight again?"

For the first time since arriving, the members of the Protectorate spoke in English. "They will fight regardless of our interference. It is in their nature. Their rebirths have not changed their hearts. They were Chosen to defend the human race, because it is not in their nature to allow an innocent to suffer if they can help. Even the Dark One protected those that she could when she was barely capable of taking care of herself."

Elizabeth hesitated to contradict the powerful being, but her memories of her life as Buffy, before becoming a Slayer, clearly showed a typical shallow, vain California cheerleader. Then she paused as a long forgotten memory suddenly surfaced. The one time she had known about one of her classmates in trouble, she _had_ done something, hadn't she? She'd just made sure that no one could track it back to her. A girl she would have never been caught dead consorting with, but she had forgotten something in her gym locker and returned to the locker room after gym class where the girl had hung back to shower and change alone, and she'd seen the mottled bruises that had covered the entire length of her back. A little research and an anonymous phone call from the payphone at one of their hangouts had resulted in the police catching the girl's alcoholic father red-handed beating the daylights out of her as she'd tried to shield her mother.

She, as Buffy, had always thought that her being Called had been some sort of cosmic fluke, but maybe whatever it was that chose the next Slayer had seen something in her that she, herself, had never even suspected until she had been Called.

"It's okay, Sam." She reassured her sister. "I'd planned on trying to get into the program when I turned 18, anyway. I've already got a couple of ideas that I want to run by you that would help you and your teams."

Sam's shoulders dropped in defeat. When she had approached the General about possibly bringing Elizabeth into the Stargate program, she'd never intended on her baby sister being on the front lines. She didn't like knowing what Eli had been through before, past life or not, and now this.

"We'll be okay, Big Sis." Elizabeth said. Jordan snickered. That was usually what she called Janet. "With our old memories, we're a lot better prepared for what we're going to have to do. We've got the experience, and with their help, we'll have the abilities."

"Yeah, Blondie," Jordan finally spoke up. "We kick ass now. Can you imagine the damage we'll be able to do with super powers?"

"How long would they be gone?" Sam asked, resigning herself to the situation.

Before anyone could respond, the alarm klaxons went off again. _*Unscheduled incoming wormhole.*_

The SGC officers left the teens and the members of the Protectorate in the conference room and made their way quickly to the Control Room.

"Receiving IDC." Walter was stating as Hammond came up next to him. "It's the Tok'ra, sir."

"Open the iris." The General ordered.

A moment later, former Air Force General, now host to Tok'ra High Council member, Selmak, Jacob Carter stepped through the Stargate with a duffle bag. He looked to the officers like he was on leave. At Hammond's command, the guards lowered their weapons.

"Jacob?" Hammond called through the intercom. "Has something happened?"

"No, George, everything is fine." Jacob nodded up at him and the others. "I simply felt like coming for a visit. If that's all right with you, kiddo." The last was said to Sam.

She leaned over to speak into another microphone. "Sure, dad, but we're kind of in the middle of something right now. You might want to come up to the conference room."

Jacob frowned even as he nodded. There was something in her voice that he didn't like. He made his way to the conference room, and almost dropped his duffel in shock.

"What are you doing here, Elizabeth?" Jacob demanded, momentarily ignoring the reaction that Selmak was exhibiting towards the strangers in the room. He wanted to know what the hell his youngest was doing at the core of the most secret government program in the world. "If you're here because you hacked into their systems, young lade, we are going to have a serious discussion."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and ignored him. In her mind, he had no right to be acting all parental on her when he'd never actually been her parent. Jordan sneered at him in swiftly rising anger. She really didn't like her girlfriend's father.

One of the male members of the Protectorate studied the new arrival with his head cocked to the side. "I find that I must confess my confusion." He spoke in English. "You have made no attempt to be a part of the Champion's life since shortly after her birth, but you still feel that you have the right to make parental demands?"

"Who the hell are you?" Jacob demanded, flushing slightly at the blatant questioning of his parental abilities. No one had stated openly spoken about his admittedly poor treatment of his youngest daughter since Mark and George, and that had been years ago. "What do you know about me and my family? Samantha?"

"We have watched over the Champions since they were delivered to us, awaiting the time of Remembrance, so that we may aid them in their destiny." The woman answered. "We watched as you pulled away from her as an infant, because in your mind and heart, you felt that you could not bear to watch her die. We could understand such sentiments so soon after the loss of your mate; however, the continued withdrawal during her growing years was unacceptable. As such, we acknowledge only the concerns of those who have taken active part in the growth of the Champions."

There was complete and utter silence. Everyone, with the exception of the Teal'c and the Champions in question, were shocked and a little dumbstruck. While none of them had approved of Jacob's treatment of Elizabeth, no one had even thought to keep him out of the loop of anything concerning his daughter.

"What concerns?" Jacob asked. "What Champions? Who _are_ you people?"

Sam quickly filled her father in on everything she had learned since SG-1 had retrieved Elizabeth from the Velonan homeworld. Then, of course, she had to backtrack and explain just what Elizabeth had been doing there in the first place. She told him what Elizabeth learned about the fate of the Velonans. How the Ancients had wiped them out in fear of what the Protectorate would do, and then told him that the beings currently in the room with them were members of that same Protectorate.

"If what Elizabeth had been saying was true, Jacob," Hammond interjected, "then she probably saved us all."

Jacob wanted to deny everything, from the unbelievable issue that his daughter had been a mystical warrior in a previous life and another dimension, to the fact that she was about to be taken away to be prepared to fight, in the near future, and against the Goa'uld or possibly something worse. He was about to make his denials fervent and verbal, when Selmak uncharacteristically told him to shut the hell up. And in those very words. Jacob's tongue froze in his mouth. In the time that they had been blended, Selmak had never made a flat out demand such as that one, especially when it came to Earth matters and his family.

Watching her father choke back more words, Elizabeth finally turned her attention back to the Protectorate. "What's going to happen to us?"

"You will be taken to our realm so that we might make the final adjustments." The leader said, still speaking in English for the benefit of the others. "Time has no meaning there, and your bodies will have the time that they need to adjust without damage. Then you will be delivered unto the Ancients to further your training and your education."

"How long with they have to be gone?" Janet finally spoke, asking a question that had been on all of their minds.

"Two of your years only." Was the answer. "We are not like their previous masters. They will have time to themselves before they are needed. During that time, however, you will have to prepare the way for them to enter into this battle that you wage. They will help you with the scourge that are the Goa'uld, but in return, you must help them fulfill their own duties."

"Don't worry about that." Jack spoke up. "We intended to anyway."


	11. Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Jacob Carter was a man who had always been sure of himself and where he stood. His whole life had been dedicated to two things. His country and his family, despite what his son had always believed. He had never been prone to emotion. A career military man from a long line of career military men, he had been groomed for the military life practically from the cradle, and emotions were something that had never been particularly encouraged in his life. Now, though, in the face of everything he had just been told, he found himself forced to acknowledge his failure as a father to his youngest child.

Falling in love with Rebecca had taken him by such complete surprise. She had been loving and understanding and had done more than her part in helping him balance his military and home life.

She had also balanced him in ways that he had never conceived of before. When he would have followed the family tradition, and prepared Mark for military life, Rebecca had put her foot down and decreed that their son would have the freedom to choose what he wanted to do with his life.

His son's resentment and animosity for the military began at an early age. He hated how it took Jacob from his family for unknowable lengths of time, and how his mother constantly worried if he would come home or not. He hated that Jacob would get a phone call and leave without looking back, missing birthdays and ball games, anniversaries and graduations.

Then, Sam had been born, and she had been everything that Mark hadn't been. Despite the glaring genius IQ that she had tested at when she was young, she was also highly athletic and absolutely enthralled with everything about his career. Jacob had quickly realized that it was his daughter that was destined to follow in his footsteps, not his son.

He answered every question she asked of him, told her every story that she wanted to hear, and in the process, instilled a love for the service that equaled her brother's disdain. He taught her to be dedicated to her duty, to bury her emotion when necessary. Rebecca had drawn the line at teaching her to disconnect from her emotions completely.

He had been surprised, though not unpleasantly so, at the news of a third child. Now, he finds out that some omniscient being altered their lives to give them that third child, and he honestly didn't know what to feel about that.

Rebecca's death had destroyed him. Mark's blaming him for placing his duty over his family once again and choosing to answer the summons of his superiors rather than drive his beloved wife to the doctor as he had promised, had not helped matters in the least. There are still times when the pain and emptiness in his soul where she had been, threatened to swallow him whole. It had been so hard to keep going in those early days. Burying himself in his work had been the only way he could cope.

Then, the doctors had told him of the low odds of survival for the infant daughter that his beloved wife had fought so hard to bring into the world before she was forced to leave it herself.

In his desperation to spare himself the agony of losing that final piece of his love, he disconnected himself completely, deaf to the pleas of his daughter and the outrage of his son.

Although he had seriously considered putting the child up for adoption, a fifteen year old Sam had flat-out refused to let him. She'd sworn that she would not be separated from her baby sister, no matter what she had to do. The look on her then-expressive face had made it blatantly clear that, even if he sent the baby away without her knowledge, the young genius would use every skill she possessed to track her sister down, no matter what it took.

In the end, although he contributed financially, and through the personal screening of the specialized nannies hired, it was Sam that raised his youngest child. Sam who had studied everything the doctors and specialists suggested to help her sister.

_- (mini) Flashback -_

_He had even been surprised when he went to visit the baby on day, only to find that his elder daughter had taken the child from the children's ward, into an empty room, where a 'Do Not Disturb' sign hung. All the shades had been drawn and he could tell that all of the lighting was also off._

_"What is going on?" He'd asked._

_"Oh, Mr. Carter, hello." A perky nurse greeted him._

_He nodded in response. "What is Sam doing in there with the baby?"_

_"Ahh, Samantha takes little Elizabeth in there for an hour or so each day for a respite from the constant stimuli. We try to keep Elizabeth as isolated as possible, but no one here has the available time to do something like that. It helps the baby very much."_

_She lifted a small television on top of the desk and turned it towards him. On it was an image that he would never forget. In the darkened room, barely illuminated by a night light, Sam was stretched out on the bed, and her little sister cuddled on her chest with her little head over Sam's heart, suckling contented on one fist while the other clutched a tiny handful of blond hair. He could just barely tell that she wasn't wearing her shirt, but it was dark enough to hide anything._

_- End Flashback -_

Now, as he watched his two daughters, regret for the self-preserving actions that had so distanced him from his youngest child, had never been so strong in his heart.

He watched as Elizabeth laid her head down on her girlfriend's shoulder (something else that caused tension between them) as she and Sam talked to the all-powerful beings that had told him bluntly that, in their opinion, they did not consider him a worthy decision maker in the upcoming events of her life because of his neglectful behavior.

"Yo, hold up," Jordan suddenly interrupted as the magnitude of what they were discussing dawned on her. "You telling me that we gotta go to cloudland with you guys, to get superpowers like we used to have, to fight the big fight again? I thought we were done with all that when we came here."

"You were supposed to be." Eli told her. "I agreed, well, Buffy agreed, to take up the fight again when she saw what this dimension was fighting against. Having the chance to rest, and have a real actual childhood before taking up the mantle again, really helped, but she knew that she'd never be able to just sit back if she ever found out what was going on, and being placed as Sam's sister, it was almost guaranteed that I'd eventually find out, even if it was by some simple means as being kidnapped and used against her. You were supposed to have a normal life, but the Powers That Suck screwed us again."

"Are you sure that you want to do this, you two?" Jack asked. "I don't care who or what they are. If you don't want to go, we won't let them force you."

"It's okay, Jack, really." Eli reassured him. "I wanted to help anyway, even before regaining the 'Buffy' memories. I was planning to talk to Sam about working here as a Civilian Consultant, like Daniel."

"When do they have to leave?" Janet asked.

Jacob could see that Sam really didn't want her sister to go. She was gripping Elizabeth's had like the girl would disappear at any moment. Elizabeth gave no indication of it, however, obviously knowing that the elder Carter wouldn't want what she would consider to be a weakness to be seen by the 'strangers' in their midst. For Sam's sake, if nothing else, he wanted to force Elizabeth to say no to these 'people' and what they were demanding of her.

"When the darkness settles."

Jack looked at Sam for a translation.

"At sunset, sir."

"Why does it have to be you?" Jacob finally asked, drawing everyone's attention.

"Like you care." Jordan snorted disdainfully. "You haven't given a shit about Eli since she was a baby, and now you're acting all dad-like. Gimme a break."

Jacob bristled at the blatant derision in her voice. That was one of the things he disliked most about his daughter's 'girlfriend'. She had absolutely no respect. What was worse, was that he knew that her disrespect was only for him, and not for elders or authority figures in general. After all, she respected her sister-in-law just fine, as well the members of SG-1 and General Hammond. It was just him that she didn't like, and she let a chance pass to remind him of that.

"Jordan," Elizabeth spoke up before he could respond, "not now, honey." She turned to her father. "It's me because I, when I was still Buffy, accepted their offer, and this was a part of it. It's me because I already wanted to help, even before I knew about the 'deal'. It's me because by some cosmic fluke, I ended up being one of the best available for the job, and I was needed. Take your pick. None of those answers really matter to you in the long run, though. The absolutely truth of it is, it's me cause _I_ have made the choice to accept all of those reasons I just listed."

"And Jordan?" Janet asked. "What choice did she have?"

This time, it was Jordan that answered. "Faith did some bad things before, Jan. She was really fucked up, but that was no excuse. Those PTB guys let her come, because Buffy asked, and because she had been constantly steered in directions that keep her emotionally and mentally fragile. She was a ticking time bomb just waiting for the right fuse. If the things that she'd done had happened _before_ she'd been called, then the Powers wouldn't have cared, but since they happened _after_, it falls under their jurisdiction. The Powers decided that she needed to atone for her crimes, and for her abuse of her Slayer Powers. Regardless of the new life and the personality, on the inside, I'm still Faith, just like she's still Buffy, so it's all on me instead."

Most of the occupants in the room looked at Jordan in surprise. They had never heard her speak so eloquently (sort of) before. She was the brash, arrogant teen that most parents warned their children not to hang around with. Only Sam, Eli and Janet knew how intelligent Jordan really was underneath the attitude and leather.

"So, basically what you're saying is that this Faith girl fucked up, and you're paying for it?" Jack asked bluntly. "How is that fair?"

"The Powers are all about Balance, Jack," Eli told him, "not fairness."


	12. Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

Sam sat down on the couch, not really knowing what to do. What she wanted to do, was get out and go some place, any place, else. The house just seemed so empty without her sister's presence. She had prepared herself for when Eli went off to college, but with her sister taking college courses while still in high school, that idea had faded over the last year or so. Thankfully, Eli had thought to write a letter for Willow and Tara. Sam had no idea how she would have explained the girls' sudden disappearance if she hadn't.

"How are you doing, Sammie?" Her father asked, coming out of the guest room.

"It's so empty here without her." Sam admitted, looking a little lost. It had only been a few hours, but it seemed like her sister had already been gone for months. Eli had been the center of her life for so long that now… "I thought I'd be more prepared, since we were originally planning that she go to college out of state, or maybe even out of the country, but then she started getting bored in school and taking those college courses..."

"What college courses?" Jacob asked.

Sam looked at him, startled. "Oh, right, you don't know about those." She shrugged a little sheepishly. "She started taking online college courses."

"While still in high school?" Jacob was astonished. He'd known that she was smart, but hadn't realized that his youngest child was also a genius.

Sam nodded. "She could have graduated a couple of years ago, but she wanted to stay in with Willow, Tara and Jordan. They graduated last year, though. Except for Jordan, who's supposed to graduate this year. Janet and I will have to come up with something about that too. She's been attending actual classes this year at UC Colorado Springs. All she needs to do is her thesis' and she'll have already have a couple of PhDs."

Jacob was flabbergasted. He had no idea that his youngest daughter was even smarter than his elder daughter. Here was something else that he had missed of their life, like his child's graduation. He had received word of the invitation after returning from a mission, but by then, it had been too late. On one hand, it was just another item on the long list of regrets, but on the other, he was perversely glad that Elizabeth had broken into the SGC files and knew exactly why he'd not been there. If she had even bothered to expect him, that is. Not for the first time, but with increasing frequency of late, he wished that he'd made different choices in that regard. He knew full well how little Elizabeth viewed him as a parent, just as he was not unaware of just how much Jordan Fraiser disliked him.

He recalled how unaffected she'd been when he told her of his close brush with death before his cancer had gone into 'remission' thanks to an experimental procedure when he'd begun to attempt to repair the rifts between himself and his children. At the time, he'd associated it with the natural apathy of a teenage who'd learned of a potential tragedy after it was already dealt with. Now, however, he realized that it was more than likely because he was such a transitory stranger in her life, that she would have felt only the vaguest regret if he'd passed away. She probably would have felt more for how it would have affected Sam, maybe even Mark, than for how it would have affected herself.

"Your mom felt the same way when Mark left, even with you still there." Jacob finally told her.

"Do you think mom would be proud of her?" Sam asked a little wistfully.

Jacob sucked in a breath at the ache in his chest at the thought of the pride that he could actually see, in his mind's eye, that would be on his beloved wife's face. "Yeah, Sammie," he croaked out, "she'd be proud." _And she'd kick my ass for the mess I've made of this family,_ he added quietly to himself. "She'd be so proud of the both of you."

They sat quietly for a little while, then Sam got up and began cleaning the mess that Simmons' men had left of her house, giving her father the opportunity to regain his composure. After a moment, Jacob got up to help her. They worked in silence for a while, and it gave Jacob a chance to really take in his daughters' home. He'd never really spent much time with them. First, consumed with his military career, then after 'blending' with Selmak, he had rarely been allowed to leave the base whenever he found himself back on Earth. Even the few times that he had come here to visit, he had never taken the time to really look around their home.

He came up to a display case and paused. Instead of china or other knickknacks, it was filled with pictures. So many that he had no idea how he'd missed them before. Pictures of Elizabeth and Sam. Pictures of Elizabeth and Mark. Pictures of the three of the together, and some with Mark's family. There were also pictures of Elizabeth and Jordan, as well as those with the two of them and their friends. He found himself smiling at the photo of what looked like a birthday party with a young Cassandra Fraiser sitting wide eyed before a huge cake surrounded by the others. Except, instead of the overhead banner reading 'Happy Birthday', it said 'Happy Arrival Day'.

Looking around some more, he saw Elizabeth's graduation diploma on the wall, along with a Bachelor's degree, as well as an Associates degree. There was what looked to be a prom photo of Elizabeth and Jordan, as well with them and all of their friends, including a young man that he didn't recognize.

"That's Alexander Halliwell, Willow's twin brother." Sam said. She'd been watching quietly as he took in the photos of his youngest child's life. Maybe something good will come from this, and he will finally take an interest in knowing Eli. She could only hope.

Next were graduation photos. Pictures of the young group in the caps and gowns, a picture of Elizabeth on stage, apparently giving the Valedictorian's speech. He felt a swelling of pride and a mountain of sadness as he imagined what she might have said. Sam caught the look in his eye.

"We taped the graduation, if you want to see it." She told him, patting him on the shoulder.

Jacob turned to his daughter, for once not reigning in the emotion that he knew was clear on his face. "I've been a foolish old man." He said sadly. Sam shrugged, not really knowing what to say.

He stepped over to her and engulfed her in a hug. "You've done good, Sammie. Rebecca would have been so, so very proud of the both of you."


End file.
